Red Runs the Vistula
by

Ron Jeffery
New Zealand, 1985

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      It was dark and mid-evening by the time the train at last puffed into Euston station. A taxi was secured without much trouble. The driver on hearing the distant suburb destination of New Cross was unwilling to make such a long journey through the stringently blacked out city. The true story about a first visit home for four years and a cash encouragement resulted in arrival in Pepys Road, named after the famous diarist who had once lived there. Tingling with excitement I alighted outside number fifty four. Difficult as it was to see anything in the dark, the iron railings which had formerly surrounded the front garden of our medium-size terraced house were conspicuous by their absence. The faintest of glows was detectable through the coloured glass of the front door at the top of the steps. In response to the bell, a glow from within increased as an internal door opened permitting more light into the hall.
"Who is it?" my Father's voice was just the same.
''Ron.
"Who?"
Much louder, "Ron". The door opened. "Dad".
"My dear boy. I always said you'd be back."
"Mother, Eileen!" His shout echoed through the house.

      By the time the room which had been our pre-war kitchen and now served as a living room was reached, I had been practically torn to affectionate pieces by both parents and my sister. All four of us were emotionally overcome and temporarily speechless. Conversation was slow to start but when it did, a rush set in. The last direct news from me had been a prisoner of war postcard sent in 1941 just before escaping. The card was on the mantlepiece and alongside my card was another, written a few weeks after the breakout which stated my hopes to meet Ivan. This hint had slipped past the German censor and had been kindly written to my parents by a fellow prisoner who assured them in a roundabout way that no news was good news. Mama had been frantic with worry, saved from a probable breakdown by the optimism and confidence about my well being persisted in by Dad and sister Eileen. Her hair was now well tinged with grey, the torture of a long uncertainty harder to bear than the shock and pain of a sudden death notice. Mama had suffered more than anybody else. Talk flowed round the whereabouts and fortunes of many contemporaries of whom I had heard no news for years. Shadows flitted frequently across the family faces as names were mentioned to sadly foretell the information about to be voiced. Quite a few had been killed or were missing.

      There was no cessation of the excited discussions until the sirens sounded in the early hours. Mama and Eileen were air raid wardens and went out into the dark streets in tin hats, leaving a very worried me with a father whose manner betokened a long familiarity with what was happening. The black sky to the south of London and the Thames dockland was a concentration of criss-crossing searchlights, and concern for my mother and sister only subsided with the sound of the all clear and the return of the two lady wardens. A bottle of Gordons had come to an end and the time seemed ripe for son-te Polish family news.
"Eileen." My lovely sister leaned forward to assume an incredulous expression on hearing, "You are an auntie," and turning to my parents, "And you, Mama and Dad are now grandma and granddad." The biggest hubbub of the night broke out. My Father stood up and opened a cupboard door.
"This is the last bottle of gin," he said, turning round with a full bottle of Gordons, "But that news calls for another drink."
It was getting on for lunch time next day when I reached the War Office quite a journey from New Cross. Following instructions given at Leuchars aerodrome, I presented myself to the department known widely under the initials SOE, the Special Operations Executive. The main function of SOE was to foster in German occupied territories as much anti-Nazi mischief as possible. They supported and promoted the Resistance movements with men, money and arms, and generally bolstered any efforts which made life more difficult for the invaders. With such a wide geographical field and diverse objectives, they became involved in and co-operated closely with all kinds of other intelligence efforts. In their ranks could be found some of the naughtiest, nastiest and most talented men and women on the Allied side, an opinion voiced by Winston Churchill. From the first handshake of welcome that morning I liked them all and think of them with affection. They, in turn, seemed to like me and made me feel at home.

      With the account of what transpired in England after that first meeting with SOE the narrative assumes a new dimension. From now on the names and functions of people mentioned are accurate and as told or presented to me. As far as I was led to believe is a cautionary proviso which should always be made in conjuction with any statement about the secret world. One of the reasons which allows accuracy to be claimed for the names figuring from now on, is that the people concerned have been featured in many post-war English language publications. The recording of events which took place in the city of my birth and mother tongue, away from the conspiracy and torture of occupied Europe, has also been less complicated and aided authenticity. Places and dates are still, from pure memory lapses, possibly haphazard but play no important part or have any effect on the picture now presented.

      Over the next few days most of my time was taken up endlessly talking to and being questioned by officers of the SOE. Colonel Perkins and Major Pickles are two names which come readily to mind but the name to stand out from SOE days is Major Dick Truscoe, a man of diminutive stature, but a giant personality. Dick Truscoe spoke reasonable Polish and his surname was an anglicised version of Truszkowski. Dick and his brother Adam were born and grew up in London, the sons of a Polish couple who had long settled in England. Adam, who also spoke Polish, but with a marked English accent, had returned to Poland and was working with the Underground in Warsaw in an undisclosed capacity. Dick had not unnaturally found his way into the Polish section of SOE and became my close friend. He spoke precise and well modulated English which was indeed his mother tongue, though a touch of Slavic influence could be detected in his speech. It took days of interviews by Dick and the others to answer the multitude of questions, some of which were beyond my ken. Nevertheless, there was all round satisfaction with the information given. Major Pickles was a frequent participant in the conversation and from him it was learnt that my career had been followed with interest and not a little amazement, for a long time. Amazement had become such that it had been decided in London only a month previously to get me out of Poland before an inevitable capture by the Germans. My fairy godmother and the pullover fetish had been clearly under estimated by SOE. Arrangements were being completed to bring me back to the United Kingdom when a deal of trouble was saved by a return under my own steam.

      About the lowest rank being hobnobbed with at that time on familiar and friendly terms was that of captain. Wearing civilian clothes it was realised that to appear all over the War Office and in other government departments dressed in non-commissioned battledress, according to my corporal status, would tend to detract from the weight and effectiveness of much of the unusual information and opinions asked of me by more and more people, higher and higher up. Dick Truscoe solved this problem by securing permission from somewhere for me to continue wearing civilian clothes. The military incongruity of my present rank was soon to be solved. An immediate commission was being arranged which was also a sequence to a cable from the commanding officer of the Polish Underground in 1943. The cable had been addressed via the War Office to my unit, the Queen's Own Royal West Kents. It hadrequested my promotion to lieutenant and said what a useful, nice fellow from the regiment was working with them.

      During my intensive debriefing by SOE, I had not forgotten to mention my association with Jan Nowak, the Underground courier who had taken my first letter to the Times newspaper in London. With Dick Truscoe and another officer, a visit was made to a large house in Upper Belgrave Street which had been taken over as headquarters by the Polish Sixth Bureau. The officer in charge was a Colonel Protasiewicz, and his section, SOF's link with the Underground in occupied Poland, had amassed a deal of information about me. Both the British and Polish organisations worked of necessity in close harmony. Protasiewicz was pleasantness personified and while pumping hands, made a delightful Slavic fuss and professed to have been amazed at what Warsaw had frequently reported. At a signal, the door opened to admit a Polish squadron leader in uniform, indistinguishable from an RAF counterpart except for the shoulder flashes 'Poland'. Shaking hands I met Joseph Koziarskj for the first time, and when the name was mentioned the significance of the visit by a bewildered squadron leader was realised. Not really part of an official report, I had mentioned to Dick Truscoe the name of a friend of Marysia's met in Warsaw not long before leaving for the United Kingdom. This girlfriend, who had been a radio announcer with a most beautiful voice, told me that she had not seen her airman husband since the beginning of the war but had an idea that he survived to reach England. Ola Koziarska was her name. Everybody was delighted when Koziarski's face lit up with the wonderful news that but a short time before his wife was fit and well, although no mention ws made of her dangerous Underground activities. Joe Koziarski and I became great friends, and are to this day. Very moved, the squadron leader left and Colonel Protasiewicz then signalled in none other than Jan Nowak, the Warsaw courier, who embraced me 'a la Polonaise', the surprise mutual and exciting.

      Truscoe told me later that Nowak had delivered the letter to the Times and had made a most complimentary report about my stint with the Underground. I am proud to have been given so favourable a mention in the wonderful book 'Courier from Warsaw' written and published later after the war by this brave and talented Pole. Though he did not mention it at the time, Nowak had already run into some peculiar and most disturbing reactions in London from the British, one in particular from very close to the seat of power. His book reveals details as yet unclarified even to this day, of the pressure which was applied to discredit him. My turn was to come and though Nowak records his efforts to defend me from the blast of subversion, our two positions had not the joint strength to divert the course of events being steered by highly placed saboteurs in Britain, both then and now as far as I can see.

      At the conclusion of the two memorable meetings enjoyed that morning, with obvious pleasure, Protasiewicz confirmed the reception in Warsaw of the requested radio message about my arrival in London. 'Niech Stas powie Marysi ze Pawel, jest u siebie' had figured in the Underground press as a 'Biuletyn Specjalny'* and a copy of the Polish secret news sheet was obtained. Towards the middle of March there was another very rewarding meeting. Major Dick Truscoe had probably made the arrangements on his own initiative. Dick was a British subject, but of pure Polish descent, and there was no doubt where his true sympathies were still anchored. My pro-Polish stance inspired him to help me into positions where I could all the better draw attention where it most mattered to the struggle in Poland against the Germans, and the further terror which was now menacing from the east.

      Sir Owen O'Malley, the British Ambassador to the Polish Government in English exile invited me for tea and a chat. He was an Irishman, I believe, with charm to spare. Very British. Sir Owen oozed sympathy for the Poles, leaving no doubt as to an admiration for them individually and collectively. He asked many questions about what happened in Poland, a sympathetic listener to my reports of the Underground and the civilian community. The Polish attitude to the Russians was queried. I could but report that everybody hoped for the best, yet feared the worst. A direct question as to whether the Germans or the Russians were responsible for the murder of fifteen thousand Polish leaders in the Katyn area led to an outline in depth of the personal studies that formed my opinion about the gruesome subject so conclusively. There was not only irrefutable proof that the Russians were the guilty ones and had killed the defenceless men, there was equally irrefutable proof that the Nazis could not possibly have been the murderers. Quite a number of personal questions were posed and it was clear that the Ambassador had already been informed of much about me, my early life and what had befallen. There was, I think, a wish to personally sum me up before embarking on a course of action based on the latest information I had provided.

      The upshot of tea with Sir Owen O'Malley was a further invitation from another source. The affable Ambassador wrote a letter about our meeting to Mr. Frank Roberts, a high ranking career diplomat in the Foreign Office. In it Sir Owen expressed confidence in what he had heard to the extent of suggesting that I should have an audience with Prime Minister Churchill and Secretary of State Eden. In an addendum at the end of the book is to be found a copy of Sir Owen's letter to Mr. Roberts. It was felt preferable to present this letter and similar supporting material later on as some of the disclosures embrace matters superfluous to the particular subject now being recounted.

      I met Mr. Roberts and talked over lunch at a smart West End restaurant where the rigours of food rationing seemed never to have penetrated. My host was polite, polished and dapper, and launched straight into a particular subject he wished to raise. He had read my testimony given to SOE accusing the Soviets of murdering fifteen thousand Polish leaders at Katyn in 1940. The Germans had made great propaganda capital of this massacre and had, according to me, rightly laid the blame on the Russians. Poles en masse had viewed the crime as politically motivated to destroy an important section of their leading people, who would otherwise have spearheaded a national resistance to the communisation of Poland by the Stalinists. The material included in the personal report on Katyn was discussed in detail. Roberts did not disagree with my verdict and though more or less anticipating what he was about to say, my personal feelings about the issue had always been so strong that it was not easy to accept what followed.

      The whole matter was to be hushed up. Roberts elaborated. For the rest of the Allies to agree with the Germans that Russia, their eastern front partner was guilty of one of the greatest war crimes in history, could upset an alliance at the most crucial stage of the war. The enigmatic Soviets might even break the partnership. I had seen the German military machine at closer quarters than most and had no illusions about what a disaster it would be, was the enormous Russian manpower pressure on the Nazis to be removed. Though conceding the present expediency of the reasoning, no attempt was made to conceal my disgust with the Soviets in general and the Katyn murders in particular. Roberts did not conceal some displeasure at my attitude. In fairness, my stance may have been so anti-Russian that it might have been construed as a serious disinclination to co-operate.

      Very coolly, an ultimatum was delivered. If my mouth was not kept shut about Katyn, or words to that effect, I would find myself in deep trouble. There was no need for the threat. Though unintentionally having perhaps made too strong an impression on Roberts, I fully realised the need to preserve anti-German military unity. As soon as the war was over, the truth would come out. But it never did or only very sparsely. A conspiracy of silence still reigns about Katyn, the murderers and the victims. Furthermore, the general ignorance of the whole Katyn affair has been strangely encouraged by the very governments who would most benefit by revealing to their people the fate which awaits any political opponents who fall into communist hands. The military expediency for not rocking the Allied boat put forward by Frank Roberts early in 1944 needs no comment. Why the truth was kept fromthe people of the democratic world after the war is a question the answer to which may well lie in a combination of transplanted treachery and homegrown naiveté. My path was to cross both types of destructive influence. Since those days, far from declining, the evil potential of that deadliest of all weapons — massive subversion of every kind — has expanded world wide with the unscrupulous exploitation of the inherent decent foundations of the democracies by a tyrannical hypocritical idealogy.

      SOE had shown great interest in the report on the Boris proposition. Dick Truscoe explained that the matter was somewhat outside the normal range of SOE activity, but the appropriate department was examining it in detail. To me any delay in taking advantage of the Boris offer bordered on the lunatic. At that time subversion was discounted. There was in addition an important ulterior personal motive to do with the whole exercise. Guided by my head, my heart prayed for support to develop the military possibilities which would necessitate a prompt return to Warsaw. The unceasing talk, talk, talk had become boring and excitement was sadly lacking. That time cost lives, was not considered.

      It appeared that the Polish section of SOE had laid first claim on whatever I might be able to offer and though not relinquishing control, were making me available for interrogation by other government agencies and departments with specialist functions. Sometimes alone and sometimes Dick Truscoe would come along on this new round of meetings, with more talk than ever. British interest in the minutest details of German activities in the countries I had visited was illustrated by the variety of questions asked. Much more might have been achieved if only someone had thought of sending a list of subjects London would have liked investigated on the spot. My new circuit included the offices of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. One afternoon where should I land but in a sumptuous London apartment having tea with the Duchess of Athol. A group of ladies, members of an organisation which collected and forwarded comforts to British prisoners of war held by the Germans, listened attentively to the description of life in a camp I gave after being introduced under a false name by Her Grace. While with SOE and in surroundings of hopefully tight security, I had used my correct name of Jeffery. By now and moving around more publicly, it was suggested to Dick Truscoe the advisability of keeping the Germans ignorant of my having surfaced in the United Kingdom. There could never be any real certainty as to what progress the Nazis might have made to become suspicious of Boris and a possible link between us and the colonel should be protected to the utmost, especially now that I was in Britain and not Sweden, as he had arranged. To this end an official Foreign Office civilian pass authorising admittance to all departments which served as a visiting card to every interview attended from then on, was provided. My new and once again a false name was Mr. Ron Kenton.

      So it was as Mr. Kenton that the Duchess of Athol introduced me to her gathering. The ladies all wore expressions they asumed were worn at a meeting of secret agents. Typical of the frustration at that time, what I said hardly covered me with glory. The bounden duty of every prisoner of war, it was emphasised, was to consider himself still on active service and cause any type of disruption to the enemy, especially by attempting to escape. Thanks to the magnificent work of the International Red Cross the harsh conditions which prevailed during the first year or so of the war had largely disappeared as far as our own men were concerned. There was a possibility, I inferred, that conditions for some prisoners could become so safe and pleasant that even the basic urge to be free might be insufficient a spur to attempt an escape, when weighed against the advantages of sitting out the war in too comfortable a custody.

      The Duchess of Athol developed into a doughty champion of the Poles, to launch and lead the British League for European Freedom, which battled to right the horrors that befell many eastern European countries, as the feckless infiltrated leadership of the West permitted their military and political subjugation by the Russian Communists.

      Poland was and remains the unparalleled injustice of modern history.

      On a number of occasions it was satisfying to be guest speaker at some large public meetings called by the League to protest at the disappearance of freedom in eastern Europe. Nothing succeeded in loosening the Soviet noose. A stay at Blair Athol, Her Grace's ancestral seat in Scotland, did a little to lighten the load of sorrow which had befallen me by the time the invitation was made. At the BBC I met Miss Brigid Maas, the vivacious producer of a popular wartime radio series Into Battle. Some of my observations of life in occupied Europe were incorporated into regular productions and she was instrumental in arranging a recording which was broadcast and much appreciated by the thousands of Poles working and fighting in the Allied world. With very accurate detail and effects background, a disc was made of a young Pole in a Warsaw tram singing a very anti-German song in Polish. Such an event was of daily occurence. Of particular interest was my recollection while riding in a tram crowded with Germans and Poles, of a young local lad who commenced to sing loudly and competently in Polish, a bawdy anti-Nazi ditty. The Nazi occupants, unable to understand what was being sung continued to gaze vacantly about them as the unmarried state of their parents and the Fuhrer were carolled about. The Germans showed no suspicion at the delighted response by the rest of the passengers who made generous donations into a cap, which was proffered around at the completion of the performance. Underground listeners in Poland were also thrilled at the transmission.

      Most nights since arriving in London were spent at home in Pepys Road, New Cross. There was so much news to catch up with and having been generally busy all day since leaving for the city early each morning, it was wonderful to put one's feet up in the evening and relax surrounded by the warmth of a thrilling family reunion. News of my return soon got around locally. Relatives and friends besieged the house to share the joy and but for one shadow we were once again a closely knit family. Worry about what was happening to Marysia and Punia in Warsaw was eased a little by the concern now so clearly shared by my mother, father and sister. The days also became less busy and it was possible to look at some of London's war damage and take a walk around districts which had been home for so long. A few of the older men who had worked with my father before the war were still employed at the little milk plant. The depot was staffed seven days a week and almost round the clock. The extensive bomb and fire damage which air raids had caused in the immediate locality was of numbing effect. The men and women earning their civilian daily bread and carrying out production and services essential to the day-to-day running of a Britain at war, manned an equally important and frequently a more dangerous front line than did their countrymen and women in uniform. With more time to spare it was natural for father and son to make a rehabilitation tour of some of the local hostelries. The unembellished stories of the devotion to duty by air raid wardens, firemen, police and everybody in London were humbling to hear. The people of London paralleled the people of Warsaw. In both cities the same 'never say die' spirit was grimly portrayed in every glance, but not to the extent which precluded a sudden burst of genuine laughter or a smile at some incongruous absurdity.

      Back in England for over a month, the cut and thrust of debriefing, the comings and goings on all sorts of matters was slowing down. Some of the many people I had met in an official capacity seemed to welcome my company and it was necessary to curb the proffered hospitality and prevent the social round becoming almost a full time occupation. Most of my newfound friends were, I am sure, if not genuinely interested in me personally, sincerely interested in what had been accomplished and wished to share and enjoy the experiences, or at least those it was possible to discuss. Some who constantly sought my company for various social and semi-official outings were part of an intelligence chaperone team with motives of its own.

      One day at SOE there was the most exciting news. Mr. Winston Churchill wished to receive me at his Chartwell home. Take some overnight clothes, it was advised. The Prime Minsiter set no time limit for the stay of somebody who interested him. I was further thrilled to hear that the Secretary of State, Mr. Eden, was also on the list for a later visit. Almost of military appearance in my recently acquired Swedish trench coat, in a room at the War Office a car which was to take me to Chartwell was awaited. A blonde WAC came in and showed some papers to a uniformed clerk behind the counter. We were about to be off when a further visitor arrived, an army despatch rider who with an air of urgency, handed over a message. The clerk approached. "Sorry, sir, your trip is off."

      A multitude of reasons could have caused the cancellation of the visit to Mr. Churchill and assuming a postponement, I went to the SOE office only mildly disapointed. Dick Truscoe looked grim on hearing what had happened. Something had gone wrong, seriously wrong he said, adding a confidence that any problems would be solved. We were both over optimistic.

      From the next day and for many subsequent days, I reported to a branch of the War Office in a large administration block in central London. Sitting in a room with but a few nondescript tables and chairs, were two immaculately groomed army majors, of the two a blue eyed little peacock was the more obnoxious. They grilled me in turn on every step taken along the way since escaping, retracing every detail reported to SOE on what had taken place. Their attitude was condescending and sneering in the extreme. For hour after hour, they picked and pulled at my report to SOE, a copy of which was on the table in front of them. The two may have looked the part, but an absence of medal ribbons inferred that a shot in anger had never been fired in their presence. Neither had they done anything like a wartime trip from Warsaw to Vienna and back. Their reception of the extra detail with which I elaborated on reasons for some of my actions produced obnoxious and scornful comments that my story was fabrication. Their policy in having assumed this approach to me may have been directed from somewhere above, but contradictions to what they were insinuating left them in no doubt as to my opinion of the stupidity of what they were saying. Having faithfully reported the reason for every move I had made since escaping without the slightest deviation from the truth my reaction can be imagined. Every statement made was the subject of aspersions and adverse opinions by the two very elegant toy soldiers. I felt sick. A few of the more infuriating inferences were that Marysia's family in Warsaw had forced me into a shotgun type of wedding because of her pregnancy. I had also, it seemed to them, betrayed the Underground's Vienna operations to the Gestapo. Colonel Boris numbered me among the recruits he had made for German intelligence. I felt even more sick. The pure fabrication of these charges stung all the more as in Britain there was no one on whom to call as defence and confirm the truth of every report. To talk to such people as the two majors who confronted me for days was clearly a waste of time without having some form of supporting evidence. My shoulders constantly shrugged in a 'so what' attitude as the vicious attack on everything I had said and done was continued when an idea occured. There was somebody in London who could and would help. If SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) I said, wanted some sort of confirming evidence, would they please produce Jan Nowak, the courier from Underground Warsaw who was in London. The two majors, as planned when making the request, were on to me in a flash. What had made me say that they were from the SIS? Savouring their questioning glances to one another, it was a pleasure to tell them that any decent agent always perfected the art of reading upside down, and the heading of papers on the table in front of both of them surely proved the point and confirmed their inexperience. They were not amused. I was no longer sick and beginning to get more than annoyed.

      Nowak, I was curtly informed, had already been asked to comment on my report and his opinion as to its fabrication was in line with their own conclusions. I knew then that the two majors in front of me, for whatever reason, sinister or otherwise, were lying. I was now in turn disgusted. Nowak knew far too much about me to have even dreamed up an adverse opinion to justify the nonsense which had been levelled, and had even carried the letter written in Warsaw to the Times of London, a fact also sneered at as unimportant by the persecutors. They, or the clique controlling them were possibly responsible for the non-publication of my report on German behaviour. Polish efforts were clearly to be played down, even discredited. I requested therefore a personal meeting with Nowak to test the allegations against me, and added that a refusal would make self branded liars of the two officers. The hush that followed indicated the scoring of a telling if undiplomatic point against the Soviet Underground in Britain.

      Writing after the war, Nowak describes the request made to him by British Intelligence to comment on my report to SOE. He gave a verdict in London prior to the interview I have just described and referred to my adventures as extraordinary, but within the bounds of possiblity. Hardly an accusation. The addendum has more on this matter.

      Further protests with all defensive evidence locked up in far away Europe, would not have stemmed the trend of events. The days of interviewing concluded by one of the officers, it could well have been Kim Philby, saying that not a word of my story was believed. Persistence in such an attitude, he commented, would effectively preclude any assistance by the British authorities for my wife and daughter. SOE, and especially Dick Truscoe, were shocked on hearing the course of events. I was sorry to have ever left Poland to be hounded by such silver-spooned fops.

      For the time being the chronological course of the narrative will continue, to return later for comment on the reasons for this action by the SIS. It was not hard to realise at the time that one casualty of this development was the collapse of any chance of building with Boris, the new espionage venture of such promise. Most personally upsetting, however, was the implied threat to Marysia and the baby in Warsaw. My emotions ran the full range, from furious, to disconsolate and back to furious but feelings were somehow contained. Contemplating the bewildering scene after the War Office débâcle, something told me that the fight had just begun. It is yet to finish.

      To somehow collect well scattered and very disgruntled thoughts with Dick Truscoe's help, a few weeks leave was granted. Had all my dreams come true nobody could have been happier savouring London home comforts before returning to Poland and all it meant to me. As it was there was little at the time to be happy about, and my sombre mood was attributed by my parents and sister to domestic worries about the situation in Warsaw. During leave I wined and dined in the West End quite often. Sister Eileen came along most times and her effect on the male company who participated in our outings indicated how mature my little sister had become. A former University don, wartime attached to a government department which had interviewed me was so persistent in social invitations which always included my sister, that a serious ambition to become my brother in law was suspected. No blame attached to him for that, but it could have been that the don's duty was being combined with pleasure. The personable academic was always busy gathering details clearly for a file on me, whether for friend or foe there is no saying.

      I was ordered to report to the barracks at Maidstone where my war had started in 1939. No longer the regimental depot of the Queen's Own Royal West Kents, the title had been emasculated to Infantry Training Centre. My civilian clothes were soon replaced by uniform as befitted a private soldier of headquarters company. The company was made up of military misfits and soldiers of passage, some after recovering from wounds awaiting reassimilation into active units. The misfits were employed peeling potatoes, cleaning latrines and other fatigues, essential to the trim running of the barracks. The humorous side of the situation was not lost on me, and an inability to appreciate it would otherwise have made the mental anguish impossible to bear without breakdown. Duties of such shattering war importance palled after a couple of weeks and application was made to the company commander, a bewhiskered major Trumper, for transfer to an active battalion especially with the imminence of D Day. The request was refused, and I continued to clean toilets, a torture considering all that filled and plagued my mind. If anything however, the campaign against me was fortifying. Memories of the past, the ebullience of youth also helped promote a laughable side to the situation. Other than never ending thoughts about Marysia and the baby, it was good to be still alive, a feeling worth recommending to anyone no matter the adversity.

      Whatever Private Dennis Baker was doing in Headquarters company as far as I am concerned, can remain a mystery. He was friendly, proved great company and helped considerably by keeping my mind off many miserable matters. He was well spoken and arrived, so he said, via a photographic unit to Maidstone. Though quite the scruffiest soldier in the whole British army, there was no doubt about his enquiring mind and mental ability. Rightly or wrongly, I suspected him of being a plant to keep tabs on me. No inkling of these suspicions were given to Dennis, a keen cyclist, and his custom of exploring Kent around Maidstone on the beautiful summer evenings inspired my purchase of a machine to accompany him. Living within myself and talking only with Baker, a military scarecrow, made me impervious to the banter not always good humoured, which was a feature of the Headquarters company. Those who had already seen active service and sported campaign ribbons were superior beings compared to the undecorated mortals of the company. A plain uniform bespoke no military experience, and placed me well down in the army pecking order as far as my companions were concerned. Busy with toilet duties, I grimaced and consoled myself with the thought that a year previously the commanding officer of the Polish Underground had sent a cable to the regiment recommending me for a commission and confirming the award of the Polish Cross of Valour. In 1944 one could understand that the news sent to the War Office had yet to emerge from the bureacratic maze.

      A history of the Queen's Own Royal West Kents, written and published in 1954 by Lieutenant Colonel Chaplin is a large volume and in addition to detailed accounts of our various battalions in action, contains a list of foreign decorations earned by members of the regiment. My Polish awards do not figure! Why not? Look no further than the Philby clique. By the end of the book you may have reached similar conclusions to mine about the reasons for many peculiar happenings.

      The 6th June was D Day and vapour trails of high flying aircraft and the hum of engines dominated the blue skies of Kent. Ga4ing up at the winged armada, I felt sadly out of things. Oh, for even a small part of it all!

      A few days after the successful landings in Normandy the first flying bombs appeared over London. Vls or reprisal weapons as the Germans called them, were pilotless small rocket propelled aircraft carrying a warhead. As soon as its fuel ran out, and the distinctive noise of the flying bomb's motor stopped, the resultant plummeting to earth and the explosion was a matter of moments. There were occasional variations to the way they landed and the length of time it took after the engine cut. One fine morning in Maidstone I borrowed a motorcycle to drive the thirty odd miles for a visit to the family. Through the busy thoroughfare of Lewisham, a populous suburb on the way to New Cross, I noticed that pedestrians had stopped walking and were focusing their attention on something in the sky. Nothing was audible above the noise of the bike engine, and the better to be able to glance up and ascertain the cause of all the curiosity, reduced speed was a wise move. I was riding parallel with, and at the same speed as a flying bomb cruising above the rooftops. The motor had cut out and instead of diving into the ground as usual it was gliding along peacefully, descending very gradually accompanied by a motor cycle escort. An immediate U-turn and rapid retirement coincided with the horrible thing hitting something and blowing up. If anything the indiscrimate nature of the VI and the later V2, a rocket with a warhead, hardened the attitude of the British people towards the Nazis.

      I kept in touch with Dick Truscoe and Polish Section Six. Everybody bemoaned what had happened and promised to communicate immediately any news of Marysia and Punia direct to the odd jobs man at Maidstone barracks.

      Russian armies were pursuing the Germans deep into Poland and would soon be on the Vistula and at the gates of Warsaw. The liberation of France was proceeding slowly and fiercely but surely. In spite of deep hurt and disappointment with the way affairs had developed, a certainty that the war had reached the beginning of the end soothed the mental injuries that my fellow Britons had inflicted, The combination of the Soviet frontal attack across the Vistula and an Uprising by the forty or fifty thousand fighting men of the Polish Underground in Warsaw would certainly cause the Germans to abandon the city was a widely held opinion and avidly anticipated.

      Convinced that fairy godmother was working in her own mysterious way, by the beginning of July, mid-summer in beautiful Britain with the war on a predictable military path to victory, life became tolerable. Cycling the evenings away in the leafy Kentish lanes after a productive day in the toilets has a lot to be said for it, provided one is light hearted, light headed and devoid of a sense of smell during working hours. Some people read tea cups. I became a dab hand at interpreting the evidence of conveniences.

      The war was not going fast enough, although the final result was a foregone conclusion and the Allied policy to accept only an unconditional surrender was no encouragement for the Nazis to lay down their arms. The tenacity of their defence was understandable. With such a barbaric track record they expected no mercy and were delaying the noose, influenced by Goebbel's propaganda to the very end.

      With no premonition of disaster, I returned late one evening to the barracks after a long cycle ride to and from a favourite inn. Passing through the gate I was instructed to report to the guardroom. Some good news was anticipated. Hopes were dashed by details of a terrible hurt inflicted by the enemy. My mother, father and sister were in a hospital at Beck enham, an outer suburb on the Kent side of London, victims of a flying bomb. An emergency leave pass was ready for me. With no immediate road or rail transport available, in minutes I was cycling furiously towards London. Up and down the hilly deserted roads in brilliant moonlight I pedalled madly through the night. The mental turmoil was harder to endure than anything which had gone before. After so many years of mutual concern for our safeties, the family had only just been joyfully reunited. The strength of youth and desperation to find out just what had happened speeded the bike over the deserted main road to London to arrive at the hospital just after a mid-summer's dawn. The nurses were kindness itself and looks of pity conveyed more than words. The news was bad.

      My mother and father had been critically wounded and already transferred separately to other hospitals. Eileen was upstairs. Dead. A seering hurt enveloped my whole body, and dazed with shock I sat on a sofa, head buried in my hands. On the way from Maidstone a conviction had been nurtured that matters would not be too serious. But this! Our next door neighbour from Pepys Road laid a hand on my shoulder. He had arranged for the alert at Maidstone and come to the hospital to help in any way.

      Tom Pettigrew was a soldier from the First World War, a great friend of the family, and the senior air raid warden for the group to which my mother and sister were attached. I asked about seeing my sister's body, but was persuaded not to. Tom had already made the formal indentification, and a memory of Eileen before she burnt to death was not forever marred. Telephone calls were made to the other two hospitals to which my mother and father had been transferred. My cup of sorrow overflowed. Both were badly burned with multiple wounds. Today they would have been listed as under intensive care. They were described then as on the danger list, no visitors allowed.

      Details of the tragedy fell into place. It had been decided to use our little cottage in Kent and stay overnight there if the flying bomb attacks intensified. Dad still managed to get enough petrol to run a small car and on the previous afternoon with my mother and sister had been on the way to ready the place for habitation. A flying bomb exploded in an adjacent paddock and overturned the car which caught fire. Dad, in spite of being badly burnt and wounded had managed to extricate first mother and then Eileen. The church at New Cross where my grandparents had worshipped during the First World War, was crowded inside and out for my sister's funeral, tears flowing on many cheeks, mine included. The gathering was one of intense grief at the terrible blow which had struck the family and although grief had rendered me almost insensible to what was going on, nevertheless a memory of the compassion shown by all those present lingers till this day. There is a cemetery at Shooters Hill in South London, a wooded area where as a boy playing truant from school, I had often wandered on bird watching expeditions. There my beautiful sister was laid to rest.

      Dad was in a military hospital in Kent not far away from a civilian establishment in Farnborough where my mother was being cared for. Both were severely burnt and gashed. My father, in addition to near fatal degrees of burning, had a fractured skull, lost an eye plus a broken knee and wrist with a multitude of deep cuts. Mama was just as badly burnt but not wounded to such a terrible extent as Dad. To facilitate seeing them as often as possible, I purchased a motorcycle and made a daily pilgrimage to both hospitals as soon as visitors were allowed. The civilian petrol ration for the cycle would have been insufficient for such extensive travelling and it was necessary to rely on an illegal supply of white spirit made available by a very understanding factory owner. This slight bending of the rules was warranted considering the pleasure of my parents at the visits. White spirit had a drawback, with very pungent and readily detectable exhaust gases, necessitating a precaution not to start the motor within sniffing distance of the law.

      The wonderful, compassionate and competent staff at the two hospitals helped in every way possible. An onerous task was imposed as both parents were far too ill to have withstood the shock of my sister's death. For months two seperate daily reports were made to my father and mother as to Eileen's satisfactory recuperation in another hospital. These concocted bulletins assisted recovery though it was necessary to give a deal of painful thought to maintain a semblance of feasibility in answering the many queries they made about each other and their daughter's condition. The task became harder and harder. All three of us were to suffer badly on the eventual awful day of reckoning.

      Running the family business which was now without the direction of my father and sister was a responsible blessing. It not only helped take a distraught mind off the tragedy, it provided the reason for a release from the army on compassionate grounds. Not that the release was easy to come by, far from it. My original emergency leave of a few days had been extended for short periods a number of times. I lost no time in mobilising a mass of evidence from civic dignitaries and individual members of the Food Committee on which my father had served, to plead a case to the lords of manpower. Indefinite release from the army was eventually granted on compassionate grounds and considering that my contribution to the war effort had been reduced to cleaning latrines, it was amazing how much importance was attached to a continued presence at Maidstone in uniform in spite of the demands created by a terrible family tragedy.

      While all this trouble was raging in England my mind had been diverted somewhat from its usual and constant worry. What was happening in Poland and to Marysia and Punia? To the anxieties about my English family in London was suddenly added, again in full measure, an anxiety about my Polish family in Warsaw.

      On the afternoon of the 1st August 1944 the Warsaw Uprising started. The Underground was locked in open struggle with the Germans. The city was a battlefield, my wife and baby probably in the middle of it. BBC coverage was extensive and from SOE and the Polish Sixth Section, detailed reports were available. The vicious struggle ebbing and flowing in familiar Warsaw districts, had me pining with no false bravado to be taking part. Every quarter of the city was the scene of bloody action and as the areas were reported, the names of many people associated with that particular suburb figured vividly in my imagination. Tommie, Stenia, Janka, the Lorenz family, the numerous Kaziu family and hosts of others, were rarely out of mind, almost sufficient to smother the aches about my sister, mother and father and the other grievous hurts sustained in Britain. During the whole of 1944 I was beset with tragedy upon tragedy. I am thankful to have had the strength to control my reactions by the strictest personal discipline during a testing period.

      In July 1944 the abortive plot to kill Hitler indicated serious dissension among the German leaders. After the D Day landings an expanding Allied base was securely established in France. The Eastern front was eroding under Soviet pressure. Russian forces were nearing the outskirts of Warsaw along the eastern banks of the Vistula, on the western side of which lay the greater part of the Polish capital. Soviet aircraft were minutes from the western bank and the noise of artillery from the approaching front could be clearly heard.

      Forty thousand Polish Resistance fighters were situated in Warsaw within the heart of the German defence system on the western side of the river. A Russian frontal assault, co-ordinated with a simultaneous revolt in the city by the Poles, albeit lightly armed, was clearly a favourable military option. Much has been said by the Soviet about a foolhardy and untimely start of the Uprising. Whether or not the decision to attack on August 1st was right or wrong, the final outcome of the long and fierce battle was a tragedy for Poland. In the spring of 1940 fifteen thousand Polish leaders, mostly army officers in Russian hands, had been murdered at Katyn to the west of Moscow. These calculated killings brook no questions as to the political allegiance of the murdered. Perhaps fifteen times that number of Poles were to die in the Warsaw Uprising. There is once again, no question that Soviet motive was the same in Warsaw as it had been in Katyn. During the Uprising, however, the Russians were able to arrange for the Nazis to liquidate their potential opposition. The Germans were in no position to do otherwise in reply to the Soviet encouraged insurrection.

      Russian radio exhortations to the Poles played a large role in the commencement of open warfare in Warsaw by the Underground army. After a few days of fighting the eventual destruction of the Poles by the Germans was a foregone conclusion. The initial assaults of the Poles, though sparsely and much lighter armed than the Germans, by virtue of their very ferocity and an element of surprise, were successful. Many Nazi strongpoints throughout the city had been isolated or captured in fierce fighting with the civilian population taking a tooth and nail part in every phase of the operation. With no interference from the Russians, the heavier armament of the rapidly reinforced Germans enabled them to launch counter attacks against the Poles and retake many lost positions. Had the Soviets rendered comparatively minor assistance from the outset, the battle could have been over quickly and the Germans driven out. A full scale local effort over the Vistula which was certainly not beyond the scope of the Soviet forces, in co-operation with the Resistance, would have run counter to the plans in Moscow as the Soviets exploited the attractive political murder potential. Whereas during the previous week Russian radio had screamed incitements to rise, the responding attack by the Polish Underground on Nazi strongholds in and around Warsaw coincided with the complete cessation of Soviet military activity on the ground or in the air. No matter what reasons may be bandied about by various political persuasions for the enormous slaughter of Poles and the destruction of their city during the 1944 Uprising, there is one glaring point. The Russians occupied a ringside spectator's seat at a vast military arena and screamed criticism while their wartime ally, Poland, bled itself to death for over two months in battling the common foe.

      After months of reverses, which had seen their forces pushed back by the Russians to the eastern bank of the Vistula opposite Warsaw, the German High Command must have wondered at the quiet which descended over the Soviet forces on that front. The situation was quickly summed up by the Nazis. They came to the same conclusion as the Polish Underground and those of us who watched and listened helplessly from afar. Post-war students of communist tactics are unanimous in their verdict as to Stalin's politically motivated liquidation of the Warsaw Poles by the Germans. The Germans speedily reinforced their garrison and launched a massive offensive with the heaviest weapons, including tanks, and dislodged the Poles from many of their newly won positions. The British and American governments appealed to Stalin to render all possible assistance to the insurgents. Churchill and Roosevelt pleaded in joint personal cables for Soviet munitions and supplies to be sent over the short distance from Russian bases to the poorly armed Poles in Warsaw. His plans formulated, Stalin's reply to this urgent request for assistance referred to the Polish Underground Army as a group of criminals who had precipitated the Uprising for their own ends regardless of the cost in Polish blood. There was still no sign of Russian aircraft and Soviet radio at the front was silent. The Western Allies, consciences goaded by the refusal of the Soviets to aid even from one side of the Vistula to the other, commenced air dropping supplies from bases as far away at Italy and Britain. Large numbers of four engined bombers made night return trips of many hours duration to the Polish capital with all manner of weapons, ammunition, food and medical aid. Crews and aircraft from almost every Allied nation took part, suffering casualties proportionately heavier than almost any war-time operation ever mounted. Some Polish squadrons suffered one hundred percent losses. Night navigation was simplified, with the glow of burning Warsaw visible for hundreds of miles. One experienced South African bomber pilot who took part, vividly described to me the inferno they were obliged to fly over, low and slow, to pinpoint the drops. Long after the war I heard this pilot make a comment on the Uprising worthy of record.

      Hazardous as undoubtedly were the flights to Warsaw, the reason for having to fly to so far to succour the Poles when the Russians were so close, became a subject for increasing comment by all aircrews, especially as losses were so terrifyingly high. The political reason for the carnage they had seen going on below them in burning Warsaw was quickly realised. In the words of my South African pilot friend, who now lives in New Zealand, plus, of course, his permission to quote the bad language, the Russians were never referred to after the Uprising in any air force bomber mess as 'Russians' or 'Soviets' but as 'those bastards'. It was felt by the men who had seen the Uprising from close up that the communist leaders had fully earned the title.

      Where was the Allied unity? Many an Allied airman died unnecessarily on the perilous supply missions to the Warsaw insurgents. Negotiating the black enemy skies for hour after hour, running a gauntlet of flak and night fighters, culminated in a brilliant, flame illuminated, flaps down crawl over the Warsaw dropping zone, nakedly exposed to everything the Nazis sent up. The Soviet had been requested that the aircraft involved on these missions be allowed to fly a kind of shuttle service, making their drops on Warsaw, and then over the Vistula to nearby Soviet lines for a wash and brush up on a Russian airfield. Nothing terrible to ask a war time ally that kind of favour, one would have thought. It is hard to conceive that permission was categorically refused! Many a crippled Allied aeroplane and many a stricken airman could have been saved by such a landing permission. Without it, the return flight had to be attempted with often zero chances of survival for men or aircraft.

      A further hurrah for the Soviet alliance!
The South African pilot who lived to tell the tale of the attempts to supply Warsaw by air, in addition to his description of what must have been some of the most dangerous airborne missions of all time, made further horrifying comment. After having decided on a correct title for the Russian leaders because of their callousness to the Polish people of Warsaw during the Uprising, another topic was also often debated in the messes of the airmen who had flown the missions. The refusal of permission for aircraft to land on the Russian held side of the Vistula under any circumstances had been received in disgust enough, but to be refused permission to seek refuge on a nearby Soviet airfield after being damaged or with wounded crew made an even worse impact. It was generally believed, although there were no survivors to personally testify, that many damaged Allied planes, whose pilots had no alternative but to attempt a landing on the Russian side of the Vistula and hope for the best, had been further fired on and brought down by Russian fighters or ground batteries.

      The withholding of co-operation by the Soviet, especially during the first two weeks of the Rising, was the decisive factor of the campaign. The inevitable fate of the Warsaw Resistance fighters was not finally sealed until nine whole weeks of vicious fighting had taken terrible toll of people and city. On October 3rd 1944 the Underground Army, that is those still alive, laid down their arms. What these sparsely weaponed and often partially trained soldiers and civilians achieved and endured will never be appreciated by those who did not live through it. The Western Allies since the war, perhaps through shame at their own shortcomings, military and politically, have scarcely paid tribute to one of history's greatest national struggles for freedom. Warsaw itself was unrecognisable as the explosions ceased and the fires simmered down. Main thoroughfares blocked with rubble, gutted and lurching buildings big and small were the rule, not the exception. Only skeletons of bricks and mortar framed the skyline. The casualties were staggering enough but the amazing thing was that anybody at all could have survived amidst such destruction. The Germans had saturated the city with bombs from the air, thousands of heavy shells had poured in from all sides including barrages from craft plying the Vistula. Water supplies had been cut, permitting the enormous fires to feast to the full. The slain were hastily buried, often where they fell, in gardens, allotments and even in the earthen sidewalks after the paving stones had been lifted to make barricades. When the Warsaw Old Town fell after fierce hand to hand fighting following massive bombardment, eighty percent of the insurgents were killed or seriously wounded.

      The Underground also fought literally underground. Often the only way to move between various sections was via the sewers. In the filth and ooze, men, women and children fell fighting to free their city. The Nazis threw high explosives down manholes, the only exits for half dead survivors who had struggled that far to try and reach friends and salvation in the streets above. Poles of all ages and both sexes bled, drowned, starved and were burnt and crushed to death in the city's sewage system.

      Towards the middle of September, some six weeks after they had called for the Poles to rise, the Soviets made a token sign of life with the military value to the Poles of a conversation piece. Such, of course, it was meant to be. Russian shells fell and their troops occupied the suburb of Praga on the eastern bank of the Vistula bringing no respite or assistance to the inhabitants of Warsaw who were, by then, being liquidated in their thousands, almost at will by the Hitlerites. Man's humanity to man has often been illustrated in blood on the canvas of history. Never have any masters of cruelty marred the world scene with a greater portrayal of sadistic disregard for human suffering than the Russian communists who precipitated it and the German Nazis who participated in the carnage of the Warsaw Uprising.

      The Hitlerites are today the past. The Soviets are today, and the ominous future. Of the approximately forty thousand Polish Underground troops who took part in the Uprising, over twenty two thousand, including five thousand seriously wounded, became casualties. Sixteen thousand odd ended up in German prisons. German losses in somewhat similar proportions of dead to wounded totalled twenty six thousand. Estimates of Polish civilian casualties, impossible to ever accurately ascertain under the conditions, range from two hundred thousand to a quarter of a million dead. Though not officially attached to the Underground forces, thousands of these civilian dead fell in full military action against the Nazis.

      Only the sparsest reference has ever been made in the Western news media, to the vast number of Polish civilians who perished in the Warsaw Uprising as a result of Soviet manipulation. Japanese casulties sustained during the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasati were far less.

      Three quarters of a million Polish civilians are estimated to have left a destroyed Warsaw during and after the Uprising. These unfortunate refugees, hand and cart luggage their only possessions, fled with nowhere to live at the onset of the icy east European winter. How many more thousands of Poles, especially the young and old, with inadequate food, shelter and medical supplies, must have succumbed, their destruction debited to the Soviet Union? Stalin was surely to have been one of the world's greatest opportunists. A counter puncher supreme, he was hypocritical and pitiless to the extreme, a scourge of all people, not least his own. His Soviet heirs are loyal to the tradition, albeit more subtle. They destroy minds as well as bodies.

      According to the way one looks at such things, I was lucky or otherwise not to have participated in the Uprising. My comments on the tragedy cannot be considered completely second hand. Marysia was there.* With intimate knowledge of the action, terrain and the type of people involved, plus an ear to the direct broadcasts of the struggle, it was possible to form in London, a clear yet terrible picture which the passage of time aided by Marysia's personal account has unfortunately continued to substantiate.

      A saving grace during the period after the outbreak of the Uprising and the months ahead was the full and varied life I was obliged to lead. Running the business to ensure the perpetuation of the family's daily bread warranted enough devotion to normally justify it as a full time job. In addition to ensuring that Londoners were still able to add milk to their undiminished intake of cups of tea, there were other calls which kept me occupied. A daily motorcycle ride to visit my parents who were recovering, painfully and slowly was still essential and the time to reveal my sister's death was also approaching, a dreaded task.

      I was often at the Polish Sixth Section having somewhat deserted SOE because the Poles were in direct contact with Warsaw and gladly kept me in the picture. There was no news of Marysia and the baby during the whole of the Uprising and after the capitulation with the dissemination of the Underground, contact was spasmodic. One could only try and piece together what information filtered through to London. Such a development was to be expected, but it did not prevent me from eagerly monitoring every report from Poland which came to hand.

      Aside from a deep domestic interest, the Uprising itself, the aftermath of events in Poland after capitulation, were still matters of extreme concern. Lurking suspicions forced themselves into reckoning. Britons in both high and low places were more pro-Soviet than seemed necessary to sustain what was a purely military alliance. It was all very well to acknowledge at official and private levels the value of the Soviet contribution to the war, but to hear the Russian leader being referred to affectionately as 'Uncle Joe' made people like me wonder if this new member of the British family had not been too trustingly accepted. The Katyn murders were impossible to forget as was the Warsaw Uprising. Surprisingly enough, my social life was also quite busy, but not as enjoyable as less troubled circumstances would have permitted. Many old friends of the family extended an hospitable hand and new ones, like the Truscoes, the Duchess of Athol and many others, all contributed kindly and helped greatly to keep my mind from problems, until something occurred which hurt me deeply once again.

      Our next door neighbours, the Pettigrews were very good to me. I was rarely at home without being dragged over the garden wall into a warm family circle. Margaret Pettigrew, Tom's daughter, was a nurse at a local hospital and most of her colleagues from work seemed to spend a deal of their spare time at my neighbours, often a most welcome distraction. Rowland the son, a year or two my junior when at school, was in the forces stationed near London and getting leave quite frequently, and was regularly at home, a lively contributor to the fun and games. Rowland unintentionally cast an unpleasant shadow over one of my evenings by passing on privately, with a sympathetic air of incredulity, some gossip he had picked up in London. It had come from another former mutual school friend, now in the army, who was attached to the War Office building which housed the department where I underwent the uncomfortable interrogation by the two majors of the SIS. On principle Rowland's informant is unnamed, but the young Pettigrew was told that their school friend Jeffery had collaborated with the Germans. I felt suddenly physically sick and really upset. Was there to be no end to the filthy rubbish? The concoction was being stirred but with the war still a long way from over, there was no defence call against the devious mischief being brewed. So much pain was being suffered personally. In addition the Boris project had disintegrated. For whatever reason and by whom, the Poles were being reported in a bad light.

      Often during the war, I had teased a problem to finality, but rack my mind as to what had happened to me since arriving home it was impossible to arrive at a convincing solution. Even that early on, one possibility did cross my mind to be promptly discounted. Not in our own War Office? Or the Foreign Office? But they were!

      Following the Vi's came the V2's and a further wave of indiscriminate attacks on and around London. The newcomers had bigger warheads than their predecessors and in a way, far more menacing than the original flying bombs. The V2 was a pure rocket, carrying a warhead. Launched like a bigger version of its Guy Fawkes night cousin, it was pointed in the direction of London to plunge and detonate. Whereas the flying bombs had been vulnerable to fighter aircraft, barrage ballons and ground fire, once airborne the new rocket came to earth without any possible hindrance. The explosion was much greater than that of the Vi's and arriving faster than the speed of sound, the noise of the detonation was then followed by the rushing noise of the rocket's progress through the air. The worst feature of the new weapon was the impact and destruction without warning, like a snipers bullet.

      One Saturday about noon, I remember jumping on my motorcycle to speed round the New Cross Gate road junction on the way to visit Mama in the Farnborough hospital. A loud explosion rent the air followed by the noise of a rocket in passage. A V2 had fallen in the direction I was travelling. The New Cross Gate railway station, opposite a well patronised pub and adjacent to a Woolworths store, crowded with shoppers was a shambles of blood and death. A wrecked tram stood witness to further tragedies. I pulled up, perhaps for the first time in the war, trembling at the scene of slaughter, which only half a mile from our own home seemed much worse by its very proximity.

      A combination of devoted medical care and skill was guiding both my parents on the road to recovery. Neither of them would ever be restored to their former physical well being and activity. So much of both their bodies had been burnt and broken that only a miraculous compromise with Mother Nature would enable them to one day regain their feet and lead a life not normal but liveable, better than the grave. No longer was it moral or politic to delay telling them of Eileen's death. They were still in separate hospitals and both were told on the same day. The three of us suffered an immeasurable misery. Tears flooded down both their cheeks as our loss was broken. The hearing of such news reopened the scarcely healed wounds. The sight of my parents racking but noiseless grief after all the physical pain they had both suffered seriously questioned the existence of any justice anywhere. Very downhearted and upset, I rode back to Pepys Road and unobtrusively went indoors. That night there was no wish to be disturbed by even the kindest of neighbours. A racing and dejected mind permitted no sleep. If there was a great architect of the universe and such was the undeserved and additional torture meted out to my battered parents, what kind of justice might be expected for Marysia, the baby and me, or for anybody.

      The last quarter of 1944 heralded mounting Allied victories on land and sea and in the air. Not only in Europe were the Nazis becoming increasingly hemmed in, the easier to pulverise, but the Far East presaged a similar future for the Japanese who had begun to feel the awesome power of the United States. Millions of people were impatient for the end of the blood letting which tantalisingly persisted. In London there was almost an air of anti-climax. The threats from the skies had disappeared. The Nazi air armadas had long since been decimated and the launching pads of the flying bombs and the rockets had been destroyed or overrun.

      My parents bravely faced up to the sad loss of an only daughter and there was a noticeable quickening of verbal interest for news of my Polish wife and baby, but alas with nothing to report. It was not until the New Year of 1945 that Soviet troops crossed the Vistula and established themselves in Warsaw a full five months since the tragic Uprising had been encouraged and then sabotaged. Suddenly the good news which had almost been given up arrived in the shape of a card from a German prisoner of war camp. It was Marysia's uncle Wladek, Kazius' brother, the doctor who had looked after baby Punia in Warsaw both before and after arrival. He had survived the Uprising and granted combat status had been transported as a prisoner of war into Germany. To read that to the best of his latest knowledge, Marysia and Punia were safe and well was perhaps the best news I have ever heard. Tears again ran down both my parents cheeks after I rushed to the hospital and on this occasion there were tears of joy, a marvellous boost to all our hopes for the future.

      Maybe there was some justice left and, although it was too early to fully rejoice, hope was strengthened. Another note followed later from my uncle in law. The Allies had overrun his prison area and he was making every attempt to return to Warsaw. Poor fellow also had a wife and children. The heartening news from Wladek that all was not lost and a confidence in Marysia to survive after what she must have already endured, sustained both my parents and me.

      The day to day course of the war, always keenly followed, was now absorbed with even more interest. The thrilling accounts of Allied victories were signalling loud and clear that the war would soon be over. The liberation of Paris in August 1944 during the same time as Warsaw was in her death throes caused more than a tinge of sad comparison. The French Resistance were not called on to attempt the bloody liberation of their beleaguered capital. The sagacious Eisenhower, without unnecessary sacrifice by the Resistance forces which had fought the war from within France, had surrounded the capital. Losses and damage in Paris compared to the catastrophe of Warsaw were minimal although it is to be remembered that the Allied high command in the West had the purely military task of liberating the capital of a democratic ally. The Russian forces on the other hand were directed in the field by the Kremlin with its own ruthless political ambitions a paramount consideration. The Soviet armies, as they poured out of the east, were given a twofold task. The territory of democratic Poland was to be liberated in such a manner as to facilitate the forcible communisation of the country at the same time. Blood was no object, especially Polish blood, to be spilled wherever possible by whatever means.

      Right through the autumn of 1944 and the winter leading well into 1945, under the influence of better news, life at home resumed a more hopeful purpose. Both parents were making steady progress. 1945 would see them out of hospital. Mama was the first to be discharged. Badly burnt and cut many times and deeply, she left hospital a few months before my father who had the extra hurdle of smashed bones to overcome. The news that Dad would probably walk again was a further uplift.

      Disappointment at my reception since arriving in England still smouldered and occasionally burst into frustrated anger. In particular it was more than annoying to consider that the great hopes of the Boris affair had come to nothing, especially as with even the deepest soul searching and modesty, I could think of no reason to blame myself. The Resistance habit of mentally tearing a problem to pieces was often applied and real cause for what had happened did fleetingly cross my mind but without deep conviction until the war had ended. By then reports in the British press as to Russian behaviour, especially about developments in Poland, were prejudiced to such an extent as to indicate the very strange allegiances of some Britons. There were still many people in London, members of SOE and Poles who reported a far different version of what was happening in Poland under the Soviets than was being disclosed by the British media. Slowly but surely there was no longer a reason to wonder. Treachery was rife.

      Following the course of the war from a civilian home had become almost a smug and abstract comtemplation of Nazi defeat. With regret at not being in at the physical kill to notch up a few Nazi scalps, it was realised that the war was going to be won, with or without me. Other than a recurring inward lament that the Boris affair had come to nothing the thought of an imminent reunion with my war bride was great consolation and joyfully anticipated.

      The German Ardennes offensive which exploded suddenly in December 1944 jolted me out of complacency. Only those without an appreciation of martial ardour and spirit, the clash of army against army and man against man, can fail to have appreciated this final adventurous Nazi fling. The thrust with still solidly operational Panzer and infantry divisions, almost succeeded. Had the German forces reached the river Meuse, turned north and succeeded in cutting the Allied supply artery at Antwerp, a major reverse could have been inflicted on the Allies. The final outcome of the war would hardly have been altered but certainly delayed. Much credit is due to the American forces who stood ground and blunted the Panzer attack and prevented the advance north. The Nazis at that stage could not stand a war of attrition and their enormous Ardennes campaign losses of men, material and aircraft was a bonus victory to the Allies. The German advance petered out followed by British and American counter attacks from the north and south respectively. All the temporarily lost territory was regained.

      With a long held respect for German military prowess, sitting safe in London a sigh of welcome relief was gratefully breathed. Nothing could halt the advance from the West. In March the Rhine was crossed, Germany lay naked. Fighting continued hard and desperate. The British pressed the Nazis from the north and the Americans from the more southern sector. Casualties were high on both sides. German resistance to the Russians from the east was overrun after further desperate fighting. Goebbels had done his job well. To save the Fatherland from the barbaric red horde, boys in their teens and old men of seventy, spilt their blood with no effect but slight delay to the final outcome. By the end of April. Soviet forces were fighting in the streets of Berlin. Hitler committed suicide.

      The thousand year Reich had come to a premature end. The shooting stopped on May 8th 1945. There was no sign of a brave new world fit for heroes to live in. From the Rhine to Moscow was a vast graveyard of buildings and people. Survivors were dazed.

      The war had been technically won though peace could hardly be said to have arrived. The opposing ideologies of communism and democracy were no longer bound together in battle by a common enemy. The mightiest armies ever assembled no longer had a common goal.

      When the war in Europe ended my mother had already been discharged from hospital and at home for a couple of months. She made a wonderful recovery. I fussed over her with every procurable comfort, though she strenuously rebuffed too great a show of kindness and consideration which most people who had been as badly wounded would take for granted. The scars on her face were barely noticeable and her hair had regrown over the head lacerations. The only concession to the extensive burn and wound scars on Mana's arms and legs was the wearing of long sleeved upper clothing and thicker hose which concealed the unsightly damage. On hearing of Mama's nearing release from hospital, I purchased a car. It cost about as much as the four years cash received after being long absent without leave from a British Army pay parade. The motorcycle had served me quite well, but neither of my parents seemed suited as pillion passengers especially during their periods of convalescence and according to the people to whom the odd lift had been given, my riding of the machine left much to be desired and was bad for the nerves. On the day that London erupted with joy, I took Mama up to the West End for the VE celebrations. We found ourselves in Piccadilly Circus, part of a tightly packed singing and cheering crowd. Some liquor may have flowed but the intoxication was not from alcohol. A great tension had been released. Voices, which for years had little or nothing to sing about in a war stricken society, strained their unpractised throats with vocal efforts of resounding magnitude. Next day, after a quickly vanished night, many Londoners were hoarse and speechless, some already worrying about the future.

      Premonitions about events in Poland were proving only too true. The news was bad. The Soviets had set up a Polish communist puppet government, at first referred to as a provisional administration, the word 'provisional', later ominously dropped. In May 1945, leaders of the reorganised Underground Army in Poland were invited and accepted a parley with the Russians. What possessed them to trust the Soviets heaven knows. Not only Katyn and the Warsaw Uprising, but dozens of other incidents should have warned them that Russian communists are not guided by normal decent standards. Whatever it was, General Okulicki, who had succeeded, General Bor of Uprising fame, and a dozen or so other Polish national leaders made themselves available for the discussions. They were all arrested and taken to the Lubianka prison in Moscow. It cost them their lives. News of this kind of treatment being meted out throughout Poland by the new communist masters, caused much personal alarm, some of it admittedly fuelled by my Warsaw family involvement.

      Marysia and Punia, a husbandless Polish mother and child as such would hardly interest the so called liberators as they busied themselves with the further liquidation of all types of political opponents. I prayed for Marysia to have the good sense not to surface in Poland as a British subject by marriage with the name Jeffery until at least some form of protective United Kingdom representation had been established in Warsaw. Dick Truscoe of SOE agreed with my fears about Marysia's safety. He pointed out that Jeffery figured officially in the Polish Underground register in both Warsaw and London. He referred to the Katyn massacre. I was probably the only Briton alive who had been closely associated with the irrefutable evidence of Soviet guilt for the murders and by now the Russians could well be aware of the fact. He hinted grave suspicions of a leak in London though the full import was not realised at the time. From whatever source my report on Katyn might have become known to the Soviets, were Marysia and Punia to fall into their hands under my name they could be liable for a long, if not permanent absence.

      With the war over, the establishment of a British Embassy in Poland could be expected. Although too close a scrutiny of their programme for Poland was unwelcome, the Russians could hardly continue indefinitely to hinder our diplomatic presence. With this in mind, a number of government departments in London were contacted, and details of my marriage and the birth of a daughter set out. That I had wed under the name of Jasinski for security reasons was also detailed and explained. At the time there was no knowledge that the two witnesses of the 1943 ceremony had both survived and would be able to bear testimony on my behalf. Correspondence to the various British government departments about Marysia and Punia was politely and efficiently acknowledged. Assurances were made that everything possible to do would be done. Had my career not been so disastrously ruined by Russian subversion in London, I would have probably been either already in Poland or among the first British officials to arrive to have quickly located my family.

      I forget in which order they turned up but the appearance at New Cross of some war-time friends was a great thrill. Peter Winton, the escapee who had lived in Warsaw and been recaptured, was I think, the first. Then came Tommie Muir, then Janek my great Polish friend who had made many of my false papers and last, but by no means least, Ena now Ena Walker instead of Ena Makowska as she had been in Poland. Peter who had a Military Cross to show for his rough time at German hands had steadfastly refused to betray anything about his fellow escapees and the Poles. He had been a regular visitor of Stenia and Janka and his silence under pressure saved their lives. Tommie had been fighting with a partisan group in the forests. Janek had been taken into Germany, a prisoner of the Uprising. Ena had somehow lost Daddy in the turmoil and confusion before getting back to Warsaw for repatriation. She was unwilling to discuss his fate and I did not press her. Not surprisingly in view of the shambles in Poland none of the visitors had a clue as to the whereabouts or fate of Marysia and Puma.

      The little group of war-time friends had all had one thing in common. They had heard from British Intelligence during long debriefing that Jeffery was accused of working for the Germans. None of them had hidden their derision at such a nonsensical charge. Tommie, Peter and Ena had all erupted into anger. Janek had written to his Polish Section Six not only defending me stoutly, but making some complimentary remarks as well. He also expressed doubts as to the reliability of some sections of the 'Polish' Underground. I still have a copy of the letter.

      Janek went back to Poland to look for Basia his wife. Peter lived in North London. I saw quite a lot of him and made the acquaintance of his charming elderly parents. He continued to verbally press my case against injustice and as a war-time resident of Warsaw and by now aware through having read my SOE report, of how involved I was in the Underground scene, he was very sympathetic. Like Dick Truscoe he voiced suspicions of what might be going on in some sectors of British Intelligence. A little later Major Winton M.C. was to become a Military Attache in Warsaw where he continued a close friend and in Poland rendered me and my in-law family many kind personal services. He returned to London and left the army, completely disillusioned by the fate which had overtaken Poland. We kept in contact and he joined Tommie and me in bringing home a Polish bride, yet another Krystyna who had bravely looked after him as an escapee in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Tommie by the way married Sterna who arrived in due course.

      During the summer of 1945 I bombarded every official avenue soliciting help to find my wife and child. it is only fair to emphasise once more the correct and helpful attitude of all the government departments to whom the appeals for assistance were directed. There was voluminous correspondence, telephoning and many visits to officials in London. Poles were arriving in England by varying routes. Some were from German prison camps and many direct from Poland fleeing from the escalating communist repression. Enquiries were plied to every likely lead without success until in August 1945 came marvellous news. Marysia and Punia had been located near Krakow well to the south of Warsaw and were to be sent to England as soon as possible. There was a tone of urgency in the message from the Foreign Office. British officialdom in Poland clearly wanted any surplus British subjects out of the way for many reasons, in the Jeffery case, mostly Russian reasons.

      The long awaited day arrived. My father had just returned home from hospital, scarred but mobile, sporting almost proudly an indiscernible glass eye. Both he and Mama, very joyful on my behalf as well as their own, farewelled me as I drove hours earlier than necessary to Croydon airport. A most important aircraft was arriving, it was the sixth of September 1945 my twenty-eighth birthday. What a present! I waited impatiently agog at the airfield. The plane from Warsaw landed and at least an hour went by, an eternity.

      A man in a blue airforce uniform carrying a small child, approached the car. "Your little daughter sir, I believe." Punia and I were reunited. She was nearly twenty-two months old. Speechless, I could only hang on to her while she just as steadfastly clung to a large rag doll.
"Wiesz kto ja jestem?"
"Moj Tatus." Mamusia powiedziala ze lalka jest dla ciebie."
The lovely little girl knew me and hearing that the doll was mine, no time was lost in examining it. "Tatusiu, you are breaking my dolly," said Punia in baby Polish. The well stuffed rag doll contained more than just rags. Many of my false papers were hidden within it. Oiled and well wrapped up was some thing metallic, dangerous but not loaded. One of the world's most capable and despicable English traitors who was then interrogating Marysia had been well taken in by a young girl from the Polish Resistance.* Not until long after the war did Marysia know that the man who grilled her at Croydon was Philby. She recognised him from photographs of the degenerate which appeared in the press. The Robin Hood aura bestowed by the media in some reports of Philby's despicable career is sickening as well as suspicious. What grateful heirs of such treacherous scum might still be entrenched within British institutions?

      Hours went by. impatience was at bursting point. The drive home from Croydon to New Cross was almost wordless. Punia chattered a little in Polish, but Marysia and I were almost silent. There was so much to say but words seemed superfluous and I drove with one hand, the other locked tightly in Marysia's grip. Silent volumes of communication and relief passed through us, backwards and forwards from one to the other.

      We were safe. We had survived. Laughter and talk would come later after the ugly memories of what could have parted us for ever began to recede. As the car curbed outside our house, two figures rose from their seats at the large bay window. Before we alighted the front door opened and the excited new grandparents could hardly contain themselves. Their welcome to the new family was Polish in its profuseness. The delighted faces of my mother and father shone with approval as they embraced the two new Jefferys. "You will fill an empty space in our hearts," said my Mama to her new daughter-in-law.

      The reference to the fate of my sister was not lost on any of us.
Marysia and Punia were elevated to heads of the household. Food, drink and clothing appeared in astonishing post-war quantities. A new home atmosphere was re-kindled, of great joy to us and the host of well wishers who descended to meet the newcomers and especially to inspect my war bride. A boyhood friend of mine, returned from the war at sea, on meeting Marysia for the first time summed up with a remark that illustrated the consensus of opinion.
"You always were a lucky sod, Ron," he said.

      Punia our little girl, was pretty, engaging and bright. She spoke very little English to start with and it is sad to report that such was her progress with the language of her new home that she was soon in danger of speaking no Polish. This threat was averted by our threesome using Polish as the family means of communication whenever by ourselves. Marysia was called to London for interviews by various parties, but never for such an extensive and lengthy grilling as she had experienced on arrival at the airport, mainly about me by Philby. At SOE she was made very welcome and apart from the odd distasteful exception, she felt very much at home with officialdom in England. Such prejudice which was shown against me was along the same lines that has already been written about. Suggestions were made which infuriated her and she had no desire to even mention such nonsense.

      Marysia was also unwilling to discuss in much detail what had befallen her and Punia in Poland during our enforced separation. Realising that the recollections were too painful, a general outline was accepted and the subject temporarily partly ignored, as we both looked forward to a future which could not fail to be an improvement on the trials of the past. Fate had seen fit to deny any future at all to so many of our war-time friends, yet a further reason for erasing too many thoughts of those times. References as to what happened during our parting cropped up many times over the years. Convinced that what happened to Marysia, Punia and members of her family was essential to the narrative, Marysia was induced much later on to give an account. She found it less emotionally arduous to tape her experiences during the eighteen months after I left Warsaw for England, her arrival at Croydon. Once again to avoid interruption to the general flow of sequence, a transcription of what Marysia recorded has been included in the addendum.

      The advent of Marysia and Punia was a signal for both my parents to burst through the fetters of disability left by the terrible moral and physical wounds suffered from the flying bomb. Mama, still a young woman and only in her late forties, careful to keep her scars fashionably concealed, became cheerful and active again. With only one eye, and the use of only one leg and hand, my father began once more to drive a car. Such was his return to good spirits that he found the good humoured remarks I would make as his courageous passenger quite amusing.

      The business ran its profitable little self and most mornings at opening time during the winter after Marysia's arrival, found Dad and me quaffing a congenial stout in front of the open fire at our favourite pub. The brew deserves an unsolicited mention by name, Guinness. Our pipes were always lit, distributing the smoke and aroma of Lloyd's Bondman tobacco to our hearts content. During this period of almost a year we all lived harmoniously and comfortably in Pepys Road. Mama and Marysia busied themselves attending to the wants of Punia, my father and me. What more could two lovely women want of life?

      During most of the war, had my fairy godmother offered me the permanent comfort of the life I was now living there would have been no hesitation in accepting the proposal without quibble. How contrary is man! Not daring to show it, I was becoming restless. There was no excitement. Marysia was in regular written contact with her family in Poland. With parcels of food and clothing from a host of mobilised friends and relatives, we were able to ease a little of the hardship of life in the stricken Warsaw area.

      Sometime early in 1946 I was invited to a function at Polish Army headquarters in London. There I met personally for the first time General Bor Komorowski, the former commanding officer of the Polish Underground Army who had led the Warsaw Uprising, to be later liberated from a German prison. I was much touched by the personal presentation of my Polish Cross of Valour awarded after the Austrian episode in 1943. He and his staff made the nicest remarks. Marysia and I became close friends of both Bor and his wife Jrena who were gracious enough to become godparents to our son Martin who appeared on the scene in September 1946. The Poles must have been quite sure that I had not collaborated with the Germans as claimed by the Philby clique.

      The Bors were even worse off. I was still able to live in my own country.
By that time a small farmlet at Wrotham in Kent about twenty miles from London had been acquired. A picturesque little holding, it had a paddock, a small wood, a glade of magnificent beech trees, under which flourished in spring, a carpet of bluebells. The site was elevated and the old London to Dover coach road, long since disused, ran boulder strewn and steep alongside the entrance gate. Labour in Vain Lane was the address. It conjured up visions of dismounted passengers, sweating, straining horses and the cracking of the drivers whip above the noise of panting and snorting man and beast as the inhospitable gradient was tackled. At Wrotham my love of nature, unrequited during the war was indulged to the full. Butts Hill Farm, as well as home for Marysia, Punia and later Martin in September 1946, housed dogs, cats, ducks, turkeys, goats, rabbits, fowls, and many tame members of my favourite crow family hand-reared from nestlings. The laundry of the house was the nightly roosting place of three colourful jays whose early morning clamouring to be let out, precluded any indolent lying abed.

      Warsaw born and bred, Marysia was busy adapting herself to the rural scene. She enjoyed the new type of life or certainly made a very convincing pretence of doing so. Many visitors came to stay, including quite a few Poles. The Bors and Joe Koziarski, as well as hosts of English friends descended on us for a taste of the country. My parents had moved into a smaller and more convenient house in Eltham, South London. They enjoyed nothing better than a drive to Wrotham, a very welcome and frequent exercise. Our whole family relationship continued to flourish very happily in spite of my ever present hankering for the stimulation of the war years. There was still plenty to fight for but I had been manoeuvred out into the cold.

      Tommie and Stenia were living in Berlin where my old friend worked for the Allied Control Commission happily utilising his war-time experiences. Peter Winton was a military attache in Warsaw. Janek, my false paper expert and colleague from the Underground, had gone back to Warsaw to escape later with his wife Basia, to Canada. Ena, baby sitter supreme, came and stayed with us from time to time. She recognised my frustration and counselled as ever to remain calm and peaceful. It was easier for her, over twice my age, and untroubled by the angry urges which continued to frustrate me. After the fillip of personally receiving the Polish Cross from General Bor I made a series of unsuccessful attempts to unravel the mysterious misfortunes which had plagued my career since arriving in England, but there was no penetrable chink in the bureaucratic shield which thwarted every effort. Disgusted I secretly smouldered and the puzzle took ages to unravel from a disadvantaged position.

      The Nazis had been vanquished. The second world war had started with the battle to liberate Poland and ended with its people still fighting for liberation. Letters and telephone calls to Butt's Hill Farm from Polish people in England were an almost daily occurrence. Many were pitiful enquiries as to the possible whereabouts of loved ones who had fought in the Underground of whom I might conceivably have had some knowledge. One exception was an approach from the Polish Telegraph Agency, then based in London. The agency conducted a Reuter type operation, disseminating news through Polish dailies and periodicals which catered for thousands of exiled Poles all over the world. English law required the operation of the agency in the United Kingdom to be under at least the nominal guidance of a British subject. In spite of the depths to which some of my fellow country men had consigned me, I was offered and gladly accepted a request to become managing director. More interest was taken in the job than required by the purely administrative regulations, and it was an excellent excuse to go frequently to London as well as a means of keeping me closely in touch with the developing political tragedy in Poland.

      I also recommenced playing rugby football at the ripe old age of thirty, a useful safety valve denied and unnecessary ip war-time. Marysia often came to watch the games on Saturday afternoon and strived to remain appreciatively serious over what she considered a very rough and indecipherable pastime. One Saturday evening during the playing season, we had been invited to a function of Polish big wigs at the White Eagle Club in London. Marysia had decided to go by herself in her finery, leaving me to make m~ way directly after the usual Saturday afternoon game. A sequence of separately unimportant events ensued. The closing minutes of the match saw me lying prostrate on the field of play. Returning consciousness in the dressing room revealed a monstrous black and swollen eye. Recovered sufficiently to shower, change into a dinner jacket and gulp down the traditional ale, I was already running well late for the function, and driving in the dark with one eye, precluded getting a move on, which would have otherwise been the case. An arrival, after all were seated was unfortunate enough. Marysia was understandably a little cross as the huge black eye sat down beside her. What hurt most, however, was that all the Poles present jumped to the erroneous and unfair conclusion that Jeffery had been fisticuffing. A few games later I broke my collar bone, or somebody broke it for me. Marital bliss was enhanced by the decision to hang up my boots.

      Marysia's young brother, name now anglicised from Jedrek to Andrew, also reached England. He had developed into a wild but very likeable lad. Having killed at fourteen years old during the Uprising, and thence via Italy and Germany to finally arrive in England, he had hardly enjoyed the normal upbringing of a physician's son. I had fortunately reached the early twenties in a reasonably civilised manner before the world blew up and and a lot of me with it.

      At our Butt's Hill farmlet, the first of a number of nightmares was experienced and it was some years before the trouble ceased. I constantly dreamed that a Nazi patrol on the streets of Warsaw had caught me, and I finished up lying on a palliasse of straw in a completely dark underground room at Gestapo headquarters. From somewhere above came the screams of a man being tortured. Realising that shortly it would be my turn, stiff and terrified in the darkness, I perspired profusely while vividly imagining the trial ahead. The fantasy took varying times to disappear. A trembling from cold would sometimes follow the perspiration, before a slow realisation on waking up that the whole affair was a dream, ended a frightening experience. I suffered one very bad attack shortly after arrival in New Zealand. We had rented a furnished house in Auckland. Our large double bed was the old fashioned type with a high and heavy brass railing at both top and bottom. Such was the intensity of feeling on that occasion that I was attempting to scale the railings at the end of the bed to escape through the window. My shouts woke Marysia who prevented my leaping over the top and into the floor. During the whole of the war I had no such unpleasantness, but a couple of mild repetitions have taken place while writing this book.

      A combination of influences decided me to leave England.There was no sign of any official regret as to the insults ~nd hurt that had been heaped on me. More important, under such a cloud, I could hardly expect ever to get the kind of job for which I modestly concluded that linguistic and other talents made me eminently suited. How I would have appreciated an opportunity to try and save Poland from its dismemberment by the communists, which was proceeding apace!

      I was no longer at home in the Unit&d~Kingdom. My tribe had cast me out with accusations never withdrawn. The great hurt set my thoughts on leaving the land I cherished, but which no longer cherished me. My father, firmly back in a business saddle, had little need of my participation. Sensing my restlessness, we discussed selling out and eventually a satisfactory deal was concluded. The decision to dispose of the business was prompt and in 1948, Marysia, Punia, latecomer Martin and I flew out to New Zealand. My parents came later. My father's often repeated description of our new home as God's own country was amply justified.

electronic version by:
Roman Antoszewski
Auckland, Titirangi, New Zealand (Oct. 2000)
antora@ihug.co.nz